


and all the while adored

by bitofadance



Category: Once Upon a Time RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 03:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5811766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitofadance/pseuds/bitofadance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And that is when everything changes. Because suddenly the songs aren’t just songs anymore. They’re messages. And they could say anything.</p>
<p>They could say everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and all the while adored

**Author's Note:**

> I had a couple requests to put this up here, so here it is! Under a spiffy new account and everything.
> 
> I would like to dedicate this lovely piece of unedited trash to two wonderful individuals:
> 
> 1) The one who pulled me aboard this ship in the first place  
> 2) The one whose conversation inspired this fic
> 
> You are both terrible and I love you lots.
> 
> Enjoy!

It doesn’t start with a single song, but rather a bunch of them. Lana drops a title here, an artist there, will ramble on about her latest album obsession for minutes on end if given the chance. She has such eclectic tastes, and Jen could never keep up with them if she tried.

“What was the name of that one guy you were listening to last week? The one with the voice, that you played me on your iPod right before we did the mansion scene?”

Lana frowns in concentration for a minute before her face brightens again.

“Oh, Nick Cave!”

She’s about to go off again, Jen can tell, but they don’t have time, because she has to get to the fitting room. So she tells Lana to just text her the name of the song they listened to.

So Lana does. But then she texts again to tell Jen another song by them she needs to listen to, because it’s her favorite.

Jen listens to it that night alone in her room, enjoys his low, gravelly tones, especially “O Children,” the song Lana recommended particularly for her. So now she wants to return the favor, and she shoots back with a Halsey song she isn’t sure Lana has heard yet.

(She finds out later it was actually aired on one of the OUAT episodes, but hey, she gets points for trying.)

Soon enough it’s turned into a game, of sorts. A mending of fences, a way to ease back out of this weird stalemate they’ve been in lately.

But as with everything between them, it has layered meaning, because Jen plays it off casually like it isn’t really a big deal, but she keeps a playlists with all the songs Lana has recommended, and sometimes she plays it and lets the lyrics wash over her and sometimes it’s a comfort but sometimes it _hurts_ and never, never is it really “nothing.”

She doesn’t give the playlist a name, just a lightning emoji, and she doesn’t really even know why. She doesn’t think about how maybe it stands for Lana’s lip scar, maybe it’s a representation of their relationship, maybe she just likes the tiny little lightning symbol and thinks it’s cute. (Even Ava doesn’t buy that one.)

The playlists grows and grows, and they have different shooting schedules, so sometimes their only communication is through songs.

One night, Lana sends her sushi, and Jen gets an idea she thinks is funny at the moment when it pops into her head, and she does nothing besides pull up their gc song rec thread (where it is thankfully her turn), and links to Thank U by Alanis Morissette. Lana responds with a link to You’re Welcome by Jay-Z.

And that... _that_ is when everything changes.

Because suddenly the songs aren’t just songs anymore. 

They’re messages. 

And they could say anything.

They could say _everything_.

Whether she wants them to or not...that’s the question she can’t really answer, not with Fred in the picture. (Not before he was in the picture either, but that is neither here nor there.)

So suddenly this thing that already harbored more meaning to her than it should before becomes almost all-consuming. She agonizes over every song she recommends, saying _just enough_ but not too much. Never too much. (What is too much? Sometimes she looks and Lana looks back, and she just doesn’t know anymore.)

Sometimes Lana sends her all this stuff that could be interpreted five different ways, but sometimes she sends things like “Someone Like You” by Paolo Nutini, which Jen listens to no less than six times in a row before she remembers how to think about anything else.

And she thinks that maybe Lana doesn’t get it. Maybe she’s still recommending songs she likes, songs she happens upon, songs she hears that remind her of Jen. Sometimes that’s the case, she knows. She’s talking books with Ginny one day, saying how _Pale Fire_ was her first Nabokov but _Lolita_ will probably always be her favorite, when Lana walks in and joins them. The conversation turns to Oliver almost immediately, always safe ground, but Lana sends her “Off to the Races” the next day. Jen thinks about sending a link to Wild Wild Horses the day her video premieres, but Lana beats her to it, her link to the video accompanied with a little heart and a hand emoji Jen assumes to be a high five.

She tries to remember if they’ve ever high fived in real life.

One night she gets really trashed at one of those parties she’s never really enjoyed and is too old to be dragged to anymore and wakes up the next morning to find she drunk!recced “What Would Happen If We Kissed.” She panics and she is too hungover for this. Jen squints against the too-bright sunshine filtering through the window, her heart beats too fast and her thumbs shake as she types out a message explaining that apparently drunk!Jen gets really nostalgic for 90s music and hahaha, isn’t that the most hilarious thing you’ve ever heard. She links to Livin La Vida Loca in a desperate hopefully-not-transparent attempt at humor before she drops her phone onto her side table, groans into her pillow, pulls the covers over her head, and goes back to sleep.

Lana doesn’t respond for the entire day, and when she does, it’s with a Smash Mouth song that makes Jen roll her eyes, because she was sick of it 15 years ago, and she’s probably still sick of it now. But what does it _mean_. Does it mean Lana accepted her explanation? Is she calling her a loser? Is she just being funny? Is she trying to be inspirational? Or is it _the ice we skate is getting pretty thin / the water’s getting warm so you might as well swim / my world’s on fire. How ‘bout yours?_

This is the part that drives Jen crazy about this thing they’re doing. It wasn’t like this in the beginning, and she hates (loves hates loves hates loves hates) that it’s become this complicated.

Why is nothing between them ever easy?

She grits her teeth and tosses the phone down on the bed, goes to shower and tells herself to get a grip. She has to move on, _has to_ , and she can’t let this stupid game get in the way of that. They’re just songs. They are two people who enjoy music and can recommend songs without any deeper meaning attached. Not everything has to have hidden subtext.

She wakes up that night a little after 3 AM to a text (an actual text, not in their gc thread they relocated to months ago, and it doesn’t occur to her for a second that this is weird) from Lana that is a link to the Glee version of “Fire.” And god, she will so make fun of Lana for sending her a Glee cover, that’s her first, sleep-muddled thought.

When it hits.

What would happen if they kissed.

Fire.

Before she knows what she’s doing, she’s punching the call button.

The ring stops and there’s a click like someone answered, but Lana doesn’t say anything.

Jen didn’t actually plan her line, has no idea what to say, so out pops, “What the _fuck_ , Lana?”

She doesn’t get a response, and when she looks back at the screen, the phone is back to displaying her contacts. But whether Lana hung up before or after she said something is a mystery.

They’re not shooting together again for another four days, and Jen doesn’t know whether to be happy about this or not.

Lana tries to send her some random French pop song later that day, and Jen doesn’t bother bringing up Google Translate to decipher the lyrics. She doesn’t respond. She’s over it.

The next day, Lana recs “Apologize” by OneRepublic, but Jen doesn’t know if she’s using the title to say she’s sorry or if she knows it’s too late for an apology to undo the damage that’s already been done.

Lana sends her “American Pie” and Jen almost laughs because this time she just _knows_ without even listening that this is Lana referencing “the day the music died” and is trying to taunt her back into this little game.

Jen almost breaks. Almost. But she’s still fucking _mad_ , because you don’t get to be that fucking _blatant_ about this, about them.

Distantly, she realizes it’s ridiculous. They’ve both been flirting with the line for weeks, and she’s the one who crossed it in the first place.

Somehow that just makes her more angry, until it carries over into their scene, and she’s angry but also this is the first time Lana has outright acknowledged this thing between them, and Jen suddenly can’t look her in the eye. The director frowns, because they’ve been in fights before, and it never affects their scenes, but she just can’t feel Emma right now. Not when all she is seeing is Lana and not Regina. The director tells them to take lunch, get their shit together, and be ready to shoot again in an hour.

Lana doesn’t look at Jen, just starts stalking toward her trailer, and Jen follows her. She tells herself it’s professional. Because she put her heart and fucking soul into this arc just to have it thrown away, and she isn’t going to sacrifice any scene she doesn’t have to. She knows she shines opposite Lana and vice versa, in whatever way you want to read it, and she doesn’t want to ruin that.

Her heart beats faster, and she doesn’t knock when she opens the door and slams it shut behind her.

Lana’s back is toward her, and Jen notices absently just how long her hair has gotten. It’s straight now, but it always has this slight curl to it before the hairdressers get ahold of it, and she wants to let those curls twine around her fingers and entangle them until she can never let go.

She just stands there, waiting for Lana to turn around, waiting for her to _say something_. 

Finally, she turns, and she has her bottom lip between her teeth and a furrow between her brows. She has the tiniest crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes.

Jen loves that.

Jen just stands there and breathes, because suddenly she isn’t angry anymore, just helpless.

“Look, I know...how that text may have seemed. I was up late, I had a little too much wine. It seemed like a funny thing to do at the time.”

She shrugs it away, and she’s a good actress, but Jen doesn’t need Emma’s lie detector to know it’s bullshit.

And suddenly the anger is back.

“Funny.”

“Yes.”

“Us kissing is a joke for you? I mean, I guess that’s kind of a running thing with you, what with Bex in Brazil, right?”

Lana shifts. “I guess. I wasn’t really thinking-”

“You’re right. If you think I’m buying that load of crap, you clearly weren’t thinking,” Jen says, she her feet are propelling her forward until she’s in Lana’s space. Lana’s jaw clenches.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Exactly,” Jen nods, satisfied, thinking this is probably the closest to an apology she’s going to get. She goes to back up, because Lana smells _so good_ , some new perfume probably, and it’s heady and confusing, and Jen is going to blame the fragrance for why she suddenly feels lightheaded, not that she is _this close_ to touching Lana, and-

“You know why?”

Jen frowns and doesn’t move back.

Suddenly there’s this look in Lana’s eyes she isn’t quite sure how to interpret.

“Why what?”

“Why I wasn’t thinking,” and now _Lana_ is moving forward, until she’s standing so close Jen suddenly can’t breathe can’t think can’t function. “You sent me that damn song. And I started thinking about that. And I. Couldn’t. Stop. Because I didn’t have to wonder. I _knew_. I’ve always known what would happen.”

“Fire,” Jen breathes, daring to inch the slightest bit closer.

“Fire,” Lana confirms with her voice as low as Jen’s ever heard it, and she’s leaning even closer and fuck, _fuck_ they’re kissing.

Jen’s fingers curl into the sides of Lana’s ((Regina’s)) blazer as she tugs her closer, and Lana spins them around and presses Jen into the countertop. Jen gasps into her mouth and god yes, this is everything, everything. She lets her hands slide up into Lana’s hair, pulls the slightest bit so she can move to kiss her neck once, slide up to the scar that’s taunted her for half a fucking decade, kisses it once, before moving back to Lana’s lips because she hasn’t gotten her fill of them yet (never will never will one taste and she’ll never be satisfied).

It’s fierce and hard when their mouths come together again, and suddenly her shirt is off and she doesn’t even know how it happened, but Lana’s skirt is hiked up and _oh god_ her fingers are under the skirt and Lana’s leg is thrust between her thighs and the pressure is exquisite.

It’s everything she dreamed it would be and nothing like it at all, not some black and white facsimile or half-forgotten daydream. 

It’s real and wet and (trying desperately not to be) loud, and probably her favorite part is when she accidentally discovers Lana is ticklish on the side of her ribcage and she giggles into Jen’s mouth even as she continues her relentless pace that’s making Jen all kinds of crazy.

They wind up on the floor when all is said and done, side by side leaning against the cabinet, foreheads pressed together and breathing hard.

Reality will pop their bubble in somewhere between the next twenty to sixty seconds, but for now, Jen feels Lana’s sweat-sticky forehead against hers and thinks of music and just breathes.


End file.
